Balancing robustness against the dangers of multiple attractors in a Hopfield-type model of biological attractors.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Many chronic human diseases are of unclear origin, and persist long beyond any known insult or instigating factor. These diseases may represent a structurally normal biologic network that has become trapped within the basin of an abnormal attractor.

Methodology/principal findings

We used the Hopfield net as the archetypical example of a dynamic biological network. By progressively removing the links of fully connected Hopfield nets, we found that a designated attractor of the nets could still be supported until only slightly more than 1 link per node remained. As the number of links approached this minimum value, the rate of convergence to this attractor from an arbitrary starting state increased dramatically. Furthermore, with more than about twice the minimum of

SUBMITTER: Anafi RC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3008716 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature